The Good and The Bad on the allotment

Having recently complained about the rain I am now bathed in sunshine (physically and therefore, in my case, mentally). Full of energy I spent a few days weeding the garden borders - I removed bucket loads of them - weeds that is, not borders - those weeds that never stop giving - so selfless!. Eventually, tired of weeding I went to see how the allotment was doing.

There was the Good News: Here is my second courgette to appear (I absent mindedly ate the first one off the plant before I thought to take a picture). It’s Albarello di Sarzana.

My snap peas Zuccola are also ready to pick. I’ve not grown short ones before - these are about 3 feet tall and had lovely pure white flowers. This variety is supposed to have some resistance to downy mildew so I’m hoping this will extend cropping as I often find mildew can be a problem in dry conditions.

Inevitably there was also the Bad News: Rust on the garlic. At the moment it’s only affecting the garlic in the small allotment. I think I’ll have to stop growing the allium family here as rust affected the leeks last year, though it didn’t affect cropping. The bulk of the garlic is on the other allotment and free of rust for now. Mind you the Digger was grumbling about it “not doing anything” which is a pain as it was expensive seed garlic rather than the bog standard stuff we usually use.

Then we have blackfly - affecting both the broad beans and the french beans. Where are the ladybirds etc? There’s not enough predators to do the job. As you can see, however, there are plenty of ants to coddle and pamper the blackfly, encouraging them to excrete “honeydew” a sugary substance which the ants then eat. I’m glad someone’s happy!